That's crazy talk.

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You don't have kids either, right? Because my husband and I are constantly reading to, helping write, etc. etc. our children, but you can't overcome 9am -4pm overcrowded classrooms and indifferent teachers.

Age FOUR doesn't matter. But it is the foundation on which they start their education. I myself went to a "crappy public school" until second grade, when my parents moved because that "crappy public school" had me a full year behind where the neighboring town's kids were. And my mom was a stay-at-home, involved mom (I work).

So don't put it on the parents and say "school doesn't matter". You don't want your one-on-one time with your kid to be all work (read, write, learn) and no play/games.

This is impossible to explain because I felt like you did pre-kids. So I understand where you're coming from.

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They got all of the socialization benefits but there were no educational goals - no reading, writing, or arithmetic. They learned the ABCs, I guess, by singing it. They learned some Spanish because a few teachers there speak Spanish. We did not keep their educational futures in mind as we chose where they would spend their toddler-hoods. We chose based solely on warm fuzzies.

Now in 1st and 3rd grades, they are thriving in their public schools.

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I don't mean to sound like at four you have to make a decision for life, but NYC public schools are incredibly varied in terms of quality, probably more so than WI. There's no easy affordable all-day daycare in NYC that I am aware of that has the kind of quality you just described you found.

It is unfair - some schools just have better, cleaner facilities; better supplies, etc. So that is where all the parents want their kids to go. The City tries to allocate these slots, esp. because more families are staying and not moving to the 'burbs; TAG is one way they do that. So now, you the parent have moved to the "right" school district, are told it's too crowded, so your child takes a test, and now the Board loses it.

I guess it would be the same as if the daycare you loved had limited space, and you had to apply to get in. Then once you did, they lose the application and tell you they'll find a space for your child "somewhere". You work. You can't go chasing around Madison to drop your children off - you don't want them to go to an indifferent daycare. Crap, I work FT too, I know what it's like, you want the best care. Basically since there is no daycare like you describe (well, there is, but it's private school and $35,000/year) people fight to be in the best public schools. We can take this to Messages if you prefer.

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But the focus is not on academics and if it were, it wouldn't be the place for my children.

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Ah, Madison, WI... people do often refer to it as Lil' New York City, so I guess you have a pretty firm grasp of what's going on here with the kindergarten applications/over-crowding issue.

Carry on!

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I find myself checking test scores for schools and such pretty regularly. We applied to a school for a certain style and didn't get in - and it was based on a lottery but I was still upset and concerned. But we lucked out and she ended up in that style of school anyway. We have a slew of more choices to make for middle school I'm not looking forward to.

School assignment issues are no joke but I do think the idea of identifying small children that young as G&T is pretty funny though.

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I also don't believe a 3 year old can exhibit TAG status unless they are truly prodigies, and I have one at home (a 3-year-old, not a prodigy, that is). I just hate that it is the PARENTS being upset that is being mocked, and not the incompetency of the Board of Ed.

It is easy to mock worried parents who can't afford $30K/year private school and thus want a top-tier program, when you don't have kids of your own.

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There was 1 public K school in my town growing up, but we were around here, so we knew what the kids in the next town (e.g., my parents' friends kids) were reading. When my mother found that I read in second grade what the neighboring town's kids read in first - and then dug deeper and found what else they were doing - we moved. I'm sure if she DIDN'T know, we probably wouldn't have.

So it's the knowledge that there IS better, that makes a parent want that.

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I offer the above only as a suggestion worth discussing.

Test scores, geez -- does every parent suddenly become a statistician?

@this_mad_woman: I'm with you on this one, Maddie.

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Doing "anything" could involve leaving New York, I suppose, right?

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Look, we're not talking private schools and snooty admins and entitled kids. These are parents trying to get their children to the best PUBLIC schools. When I lived in NYC, I did a great deal of volunteer work, tutoring children. The discrepancy between a P.S.6, say, and P.S. 153 was...depressing, to say the least. You don't have to be a statistician. I visited all the public schools we could potentially be "sent" to. Within a mile there can be discrepancies.

Say you have a child entering school - there are a handful of school possible for him or her, and you visited, and liked the programs at a couple that were more highly-rated than the others. What would you do? Leave it to chance, or try to get Ska Jr to the program you liked best?

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I ask only that you look at it from my perspective for a moment. No Ska Jrs here, that's not my thing -- but I was a teacher, at an urban junior high school.

So believe me, I appreciate parents who are willing to get involved in their children's education. I think you and I can agree that that's the #1 controllable variable which influences students' educational success.

But I would occasionally come upon parents who took that involvement too far -- who believed that EVERY SINGLE EVENT was determinative of their child's educational destiny. I guess I understand this mindset -- but it's not a rational one. If you've been a teacher or even worked in a school, you must realize that the kids who are good are going to do reasonably well no matter what environment is around them. Not getting into one program or another is like not getting picked for the football team for one season -- it's a disappointment, sure, but if the kid's talent is there, then he'll still have plenty of other opportunities to develop it elsewhere. This isn't rural China or India -- even the stepped-on urban JrHS I taught at tried to give students as many options as possible, and did a decent job at it.

I conjecture that a parent's belief that EVERY SINGLE EVENT is determinative of a child's future comes from fear, I guess -- the fear of being a parent and knowing that no matter how strenuous your efforts on behalf of your offspring, Chance still plays some measurable, irreducible role in who gets ahead in our society. I can understand that fear, I suppose. Possibly the feeling is even stronger if the parents themselves feel that much of their position in life is due to Chance rather than innate talent.

But I did occasionally find myself trying to convince parents simply to see things rationally for a moment, and to accept that not every break was going to go their child's way. Frankly, I don't think I was very successful, but that's also what inspires many of my comments here. In situations like that described in the original story, my hope is that someone is available to counsel those parents to step back and dial their concern down to a rational level. I think everyone -- even their apparently wronged progeny -- would benefit from that. That's all I'm saying.

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I agree with your point that "the kids who are good are going to do reasonably well no matter what environment is around them". At the risk of sounding philosophical, I think the education of these (and all) kids will fall on a spectrum: - in a fantabulous environment with state-of-the-art equipment, dedicated teachers, etc. the kids will have Experience A; in an inner-city, leaking school with indifferent teachers and antiquated equipment, they will go down to Experience D. They won't be dialed down to Experience Z, say. Does that make sense?

For an "average" kid, their outcome will be a "C" at best, and a "G" at worst. So, if you can place them higher up in the facility/teacher ranking, you improve their possible outcome.

I felt so strongly about education that I took the P.S. student I was closest to in tutoring, and paid to send her to parochial school in the Bronx (the only alternative that exists there) for high school. Ska, I don't cry often, but seeing her thrive there after the terrible teachers she had is still a high point for me.

She's out of college now - first in her family and amongst her friends - and works full time. We are still close. I tried helping a couple of her friends, they were less dedicated students and had no desire to work hard - so I guess seeing her through I have become pretty passionate about the quality of schools and what that can do. You can be a "laid back" parent, but because of the competition for the few slots in NYC, it means someone is going to go all-out and leave you in the dust.

Suburban schools, the gradations in quality aren't so stark as they are in NYC. Anyhow. Thanks for your post.

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